Into the Marvelverse
I’m a big fan of Marvel films. Always have been. The obsession began with the original Spiderman film. Spiderman was all that and more for a young, impressionable and idealistic girl. Things would only go South after this movie. Spiderman #2 was tolerable, Spiderman #3 was a hard pass. Don’t get me started on other Marvel experiments: Daredevil, Elektra, Hulk, Fantastic 4. You get the picture; It got pretty bad, pretty fast.
The Amazing Spiderman series was reasonably engaging. It was all doom and gloom otherwise. Marvel needed something good pretty fast. In hindsight, it turned out well when they went with the Ironman character. But, it was a wild gamble at the time. Having sold off its crown jewels to other studios Ironman seemed like Marvel clutching at straws in a desperate attempt to keep itself afloat. The Spiderman franchise was with Sony, Hulk was with Universal, X-men and Fantastic Four was with 20th Century Fox.
Ironman was a name that not many outside of the true comic die-hards had heard.
When I first watched the movie, I felt it was different and engaging. It was genius to cast RDJ (Rober Downey Junior) as Ironman. I don’t know how much the movie made but must have been enough to warrant furthering the MCU. Nobody in their right mind would have guessed the scale of what it would end up with eventually. Everything seemed to click after that first movie.
It remains a trendsetter in that regard and made me a mad Ironman fan.